Dead Ever After

As I waited tables, I came to understand the shocking truth: People weren’t worried much about Arlene’s death. Her trial had taken her reputation away from her. It wasn’t so much that people loved me; it was that people realized a mom shouldn’t lure her friend to her death, and then get caught, because then her children were left in the lurch. I came to see that despite the fact that I’d dated vampires, I had a good reputation in many respects. I was reliable and cheerful and hardworking, and with the people of Bon Temps that counted an awful lot. I put flowers on my family’s graves every holiday and on the anniversary of their deaths. Plus, through area gossip, it had become known that I was taking an active interest in my cousin Hadley’s little boy, and there was a widespread, pleasant hope that I would marry Hadley’s widower, Remy Savoy, because that would tie things up neatly.
    Which would have been great . . . except Remy and I weren’t interested in each other. Until real recently, I’d had Eric, and to the best of my knowledge, Remy was still dating the very cute Erin. I tried to imagine kissing Remy and simply wasn’t inclined to go there.
    All of these thoughts kept me engaged and busy both outside and inside, until it was time for me to go. Sam smiled and waved when I took off my apron and handed over my tables to India.
    No one at all was at my house when I unlocked the back door. That was strange, since it had been such a beehive that morning. Moved by an impulse, I went into my bedroom and perched on the side of the bed, close to my bedside table. Thanks to my compulsory cleaning during my three days off, neatly located in the top drawer were all the things I might need at a moment’s notice during the night: a flashlight, Kleenex, ChapStick, Tylenol, three condoms Quinn had left when we’d dated, a list of emergency phone numbers, a cell phone charger, an old tin box (full of pins, needles, buttons, and paper clips), some pens, a notepad . . . the usual mixture of handy items.
    But the next drawer held memorabilia. There was the bullet I’d sucked out of Eric’s flesh in Dallas. There was a rock that had hit Eric in the head in the living room of Sam’s rental house in town. There were various sets of keys to Eric’s house, Jason’s house, Tara’s house, all neatly labeled. There was a laminated copy of my gran’s obituary and my parents’, and another laminated newspaper story published the year the Lady Falcons had won their division at state, with a few nice lines about my performance. There was an ancient brooch in which Gran had placed a lock of my mom’s hair and a lock of my dad’s. There was the old pattern envelope containing a letter from Gran and the velvet bag that had contained the cluviel dor, and the cluviel dor itself, now dull and divested of all its magic. There was a note Quinn had written me during our dating period. There was the envelope in which Sam had given me a partnership agreement to the bar, though the actual partnership document was in a lockbox at my lawyer’s. There were birthday cards and Christmas cards and a drawing made by Hunter.
    It was dumb to keep the rock. It was too heavy for the drawer, anyway, and made it hard to open and close. I put it on top of my night table, planning to set it in the flower bed. I got out the keys to Eric’s house, wrapped them in bubble wrap, and put them in a padded mailer to send to him. I wondered if he’d put the house up for sale, or what? Maybe the next sheriff would move into it. If Felipe de Castro appointed him or her, I realized that my grace period was very short. With any new vampire regime, it would be open season on me . . . or would they just forget about me? That would be almost too good to be true.
    A knock at the back door was a welcome diversion. The packmaster himself had come to call, and he seemed more at ease than I’d ever seen him. Alcide Herveaux looked comfortable in his own skin and pleased with the world. He was wearing his usual jeans and boots—a surveyor couldn’t tromp through ditches and woods in flip-flops. His short-sleeved shirt was well worn and tight across his wide shoulders. Alcide was a working man but not an uncomplicated one. His love life, up until now, had been nothing short of a disaster. First, Debbie Pelt, who had been a bitch on wheels until I’d killed her; then the very nice Maria-Star Cooper, who’d been murdered; then Annabelle Bannister, who’d